Many Chinatowns around the USA make full use of local decor, even down to the directional signs and lampposts, and beginning in 1964 or so, NYC began to add its…

Though some of my gigs haven’t ended the way I would’ve liked, I’m pretty proud of where I’ve been over the years. My longest term was two stints totaling 12 years…

I took a walk from Williamsburg, up the Humboldt Street spine into Greenpoint, enjoying one of the rare clear fall days in December. Pictures from this walk will show up…

Though Riis Park and its boardwalk and beach is quite busy indeed with sunseekers for a relatively short time, May through September, it can be forbidding indeed during the other months,…

A recent mention by Natalia “The Saw Lady” Paruz about a Disston saw sparked a memory for me, of a Disston Street in Philadelphia, which I remembered from my intense…

Block after block of monolithic stone-clad buildings between 2nd Ave and 3rd Avenue from 30th to 36th Streets were constructed by architect William Higginson in the first 3 decades of the…

Well into the 20th Century it was common practice for women to give birth at home, assisted by their husbands, “significant others” and one or more midwives. The practice shifted…

The Italianate apartment-mixed use building 985 2nd Avenue, on the corner of East 52nd, is loomed over by more recent structures such as 875 3rd Avenue (1982) in whose basement food…

These new street signs appear in Kensington, a tony subdivision of the town (or village; I’m too lazy to determine) of Great Neck, which is east of the undefined border of Queens…

A bit short on time today, so I thought I would do a short item on the unique Flushing Meadows-Corona Park signage, which uses different fonts than other fonts used…

“What hath God wrought?” With those words, the Information Age began. You know Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872) invented the telegraph and sent that first famous message in 1844 … but did you…

I was rambling around recently in Mount St. Mary Cemetery, the largest Catholic cemetery in Queens other than Holy Calvary in the western end of the borough. I had never…